Half-Hearted Hillary?

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 27, 2008

DENVER, Aug. 27 -- Hillary Clinton's speech played very differently in the hall.

Had I been watching on TV, poring over the text, I'm sure my reaction would have been similar to what I see many of the pundits saying: She didn't do this, that and the other thing.

But from the floor of the Pepsi Center--a floor so chaotic and gridlocked that security had to close it off--a great swell of emotion seemed to rise up as the former first lady belted out her best lines Tuesday night. The white Hillary signs being waved in unison created a monochromatic aura of support for the senator. The cheers that rocked the rafters certainly weren't coming from only half the delegates. And Hillary clearly and unambiguously urged her supporters to back Barack Obama.

But convention speeches are not best gauged from the bubble of the building. They are television events, aimed at voters in their living rooms. And when the cheers faded, the band stopped playing and the crowd started to file out, you had to ask: What had Hillary Rodham Clinton said about Barack Obama that was memorable?

And the answer: She wanted people to vote for Obama because he was a Democrat who would pretty much push the same programs that she would have pushed, and because she didn't want John McCain in the White House, no way, no how. She said nothing about Obama's personal qualities and nothing about his readiness to be president, at 3 a.m. or any other time. No wonder Michelle Obama wasn't smiling during the cutaway shots.

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